Security News > 2021 > May > VMware Urges Customers to Immediately Patch Critical vSphere Vulnerability
VMware has urged customers to immediately patch a critical vulnerability affecting vCenter Server, the management interface for vSphere environments.
According to VMware, the vulnerability impacts the vSphere Client, specifically the Virtual SAN Health Check plugin, which is enabled by default in vCenter Server even if the plugin is not actually being used.
Another vulnerability patched by the same updates, tracked as CVE-2021-21986 and rated medium severity, is related to an authentication mechanism for the Virtual SAN Health Check, Site Recovery, vSphere Lifecycle Manager, and VMware Cloud Director Availability plugins.
VMware has published an advisory, a blog post, and an FAQ document for these vulnerabilities, and urged customers to take action immediately, warning that "The ramifications of this vulnerability are serious."
In addition to the patches, VMware has made some improvements to plugin authentication in the vCenter Server plugin framework.
In the case of a vulnerability disclosed in February, scanning for affected systems started only one day after the availability of patches was announced by VMware.
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Related Vulnerability
| DATE | CVE | VULNERABILITY TITLE | RISK |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-05-26 | CVE-2021-21986 | Missing Authentication for Critical Function vulnerability in VMWare Vcenter Server 6.5/6.7/7.0 The vSphere Client (HTML5) contains a vulnerability in a vSphere authentication mechanism for the Virtual SAN Health Check, Site Recovery, vSphere Lifecycle Manager, and VMware Cloud Director Availability plug-ins. | 9.8 |